Kevin McHale on 790 a few mins back on the drive home show with Charrlie Pallilo. Typed on my phone so there might be some errors. Recap CP: Start of game predictable aggravating disappointing? KM: Predictably disappointing and everything you can think of. We didn't play well. Talked about it this morning. Orlando had better juice. We weren't running. I think we thought that if we show up we will win. CP: 7 TO by end of first quarter, 21 by end of game. Despite it 5th best offense in NBA KM: We have Turned it over a lot but we work on it a lot. We have punishment in practice. We have lot of guys who are home run hitters and home run hitters strike out. We just have to make simple plays we work on it but still turn it over too much CP: What is punishment in practice? KM: They run for all TO. We go over it. They look for big plays a lot but jut can't have as many as we have. CP: 30 team league and Rox are dead last in TO but still here you sit 42-19. Rebounding getting better? KM: We have worked on that too. We have put a bubble around the rim in practice. Trying to hit hard on things we have to work on. We had a crazy schedule early and after about 30 games, we were able to get some practice and I senses is getting better and getting good things in. Lot of positives started while back and we are seeing that now. You can't be at odds with your teammates in basketball. Group is tight as players. CP: For fans great stretch of games here. If I offered you 3-2 for the 5 games and said done Hehe we will still play. Going to be a tough stretch. Indiana has slowed has down made us go side to side. Then Portland can really score the ball. OKC with WB back. Good 5 games CP: Do you wish Indiana won in Charlotte? KM: I'm sure today coach Vogel got into them but they'll be ready to play. We have to be too CP: Best defensive player in NBA, length at all positions. As challenging as anybody? KM: They get you on one side of court and try to keep you there. Have to play weak side ball. The team that has given them trouble is PHX who have beaten them twice. Have to run, get them moving, get the ball side to side. Can't play one side of the court. CP: Newly anointed WC coach of the month! KM: As I have always said its a players league. Dwight James Pat all played well. Now it's to te home stretch CP: Is it really nothing? KM: It's nice but the only time you win something is when your team does well. We have seen them grow and made a lot of changes and improvements. Went through growing pains but glad guys all came together CP: where are your rings? KM: In the safe. I don't wear them. CP: Night off. Are you watching or turning it off. KM: I'll be sitting back and watching the games CP: Are you hoping to make a run to number 1? KM: we got to take care of ourselves. I look at standingsb an such but trying to predict this league you just can't. I think race for 7 and 8 will be phenomenal and race for home court too. We just got to take care of our business and keep improving. Better rebounding, turnovers etc. I'm just worried about our team. That is the only thing you control. CP: Will you take anything at all from regular season games? KM: I think a lot if it is just how healthy you are come playoff time. You play teams as good as you are. It is little things that end up winning series. Have to put yourself to make playoff runs over years.
Very nice FTW. Thank you. McHale is certainly toeing the party line. Which is certainly OK. And the Rockets are certainly looking sharp!
I doubt we'll ever hear this from the Rockets themselves, but I wonder what's the "acceptable" rate of TOs for this team anyway. Despite all the hoopla that we are last, here are the TO% ranking of the top teams. Clippers 6 Spurs 18 Indy 22 Miami 26 OKC 27 Houston 30 Clippers most definitely keep the ball safe because CP3 is easily the best PG in the NBA. But other than the Clippers, there's very little separation. The difference between the Spurs and the Rockets is ~1 TOpg. Difference between the Rockets and OKC/Miami is ~0.5TOpg. Considering that Dwight Howard post play is naturally a high-TO play in general, I don't think we're that bad. Cut down slightly on the stupid passes and I think we're okay in this department.
I'd be interested to know whether the Rockets have more live ball turnovers than those teams. It certainly seems like we have the most spectacularly stupid turnovers, to the point where even our announcers are joking that we're throwing outlet passes to the other team. But yeah, you gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette I guess.
<iframe width="670" height="377" scrolling="no" src="https://media.iheart.com/player/embed.html?autoStart=false&useFullScreen=true&mid=24441476&siteid=589&startButtonColor=0xA33335&share=http%3A//www.sports790.com/media/podcast-charlie-pallilos-podcasts-pallilo/thursday-march-6th-2014-2-24441476/&podcastFeed=pallilo.xml&programName=podcast" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" ></iframe> Starts around 16:30.
Asik(20.9), Lin(19.5), Howard(16.8) are all high career TOV% players. Harden's TOV% has been around 15 since his last year in OKC when his role changed. Before that it was 12.3. Lin(20.0) and Harden(15.5) are both worse than last year. Possibly adjusting to playing with Howard(less pnr?) or maybe less effective floor spacing because of our poor 3P%(21st vs. 9th last year). If we shot more open midrange jumpers our TOV% would probably go down because we wouldn't be driving into traffic in the lane as much. FYI: CP3 13.1, Parker 13.9, Westbrook 15.5, Rondo 20.4, Stockton 20.8, Kidd 18.8, Chalmers 19.0, Garnett 11.7, Brook Lopez 11.3, LMA 8.3, Noah 16.4, Hakeem 13.1 and Shaq 11.9 career TOV%.
TOs v 42-19. I just can't worry everything to death. The PO match-ups will be a bear for all 8 WC teams and yes TO difference might make a difference. For now I'll worry the seeding.
I am a converted McHale fan. He isn't the smartest coach around but he doesn't have to be. Morey has a smart staff around him. And McHale does what the team needs most, leads them pushes them and manages the rotations well. Much better than he did early in the season. He is respected and liked by the players. Not an easy accomplishment. I don't know what his future is in Houston. But I am no longer against keeping him. Just want to see how he does in the playoffs.
Kevin McHale on 790 AM a right now with Charlie Pallilo on the drive home show 04/10/2014. Excuse any grammar errors. Just typing it by the ear. CP: Pat Bev and DH are your two best defenders but you can always control effort, I was looking for fume in your press conference. That defense seems to have you seething. KM: Yeah we weren't really good. Their two bigs just out worked us in the 1st quarter and made most points in the paint. They just outplayed as on effort. Yeah we came in late from LA and players felt tired and werent' ready to go but we can't give in to that. That really irritates me. I have never believed you can be too tired. That bothered me. You may not be at your peak and play as well but that is a different thing. CP: What's the first point or two to control the ball defensively? KM: Make them pick up the dribble before the paint. Stop them getting into the paint. We did not have any ball pressure until the last group went in. Pat has been great at that in putting pressure and keeping the opposite PG out of the paint. Isiah didn't do a good job at first, did well in the 2n stint.. Jeremy didn't do a good job either. They got everything they wanted. We didn't take much away in that first half. In the 2nd half we got up with their bigs and then Foye got loose. CP: How important if it is that Bev gets some run? What about DH? KM: We miss them both and it is important that they both get as much time as possible before the playoffs. For Pat this is important, this is his 2nd year and he needs the experience and mainly to get into rhythm. For Dwight too, you need to get into rhythm. Hard to go from not playing to playing in the playoffs. I ANTICIPATE BOTH OF THEM PLAYING IN OUR LAST 4 GAMES, AT LEAST A GAME OR TWO. But you never know with injuries. CP: HCA not cemented yet. How vital is that? KM: We have it in our grasp and have to take it. Have to win our way in esp when we are this close. We have a chance to get HCA, play first two playoff games at home and get something established. We still have a lot of young guys and our goal was to get HCA. CP: Idea to give guys rest is to give them the whole game off and not cut minutes within a game. KM: I'd like to give Parsons and Harden a mental break, they have played heavy minutes. We play a good Minny team. Deng had a big game last time. Rubio controlling the ball well. CP: D league brought you back in. Did you have a moment when you thought I'll put the starters back in when it got close to within 6 or 8? KM: Did you watch the game? Are you kidding me? It was an easy decision. There was no way I was not staying with them. They had a lot of juice. CP: Hamilton played well yday after not playing much previously. How do you think you will go regarding back up wings? KM: We'll play it by the ear. Depending on match ups. JH is a big wing and Cisco does a good job. We'll see as it goes and it is amtchu up dependent. CP: On waiving Smith and signing Pittman? Just another able body for emergency minutes? Did Smith need another message to get his stuff together? KM:Just didn't think Greg is going to play. His knee is so bad. We just needed another big. Pittman was the best available. He has good hands, a big body. DM scouted it. He went to Europe and Pittman was the best of the lot. We just need another big body around here. CP: Last thing, extra incentive. I don't know how many NBA coaches do this. But Sunday 3:30 to 4: 30, you're doing a Meet and Greet at Smith and Wollensky. I don't know if you have been there. KM: Very nice place, going to have a meet and greet. Opportunity to have a good meal and meet a few people.
Rockets/Blazers talk with McHale starts at about the 37:30 mark: <iframe width="670" height="377" scrolling="no" src="https://media.iheart.com/player/embed.html?autoStart=false&useFullScreen=true&mid=24698520&siteid=589&startButtonColor=0xA33335&share=http%3A//www.sports790.com/media/podcast-charlie-pallilos-podcasts-pallilo/tuesday-april-29th-2014-3-24698520/&podcastFeed=pallilo.xml&programName=podcast" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" ></iframe>
Was waiting for somebody to transcribe this. Nobody did it. So I'm going to do it and give you some commentary to go along with it. CP: What's the biggest cause of hope for you? KM: Gotta win the next game. We're there. It's just a play or two here and there. After first 2 game able to get Aldridge under control but putting different people on him and playing him more aggressively. Now Lillard's getting loose on the perimeter. We've got to get in front of guys and stop the ball. Normally they go late with Aldridge at the 5 with four smalls. Offensively, we've got to move the ball, we're not shooting a good percentage anywhere on the floor. Dwight and Troy shooting good. Other than that we haven't been able to generate the space on the floor, they've been clogging us up, and way too much ball-holding and not enough body movement. If we can get out on the break and get wide and get the court spread and attack them we'll be ok. We've got to be able to shut off their penetration. CP: How much of the low shooting percentage is the Blazer's defense and how much you? KM: About 50/50. We haven't done a good job when we've had numbers, we've gotten turnovers on 3 on 2s and 2 on 1s, we haven't done good pushing the ball, and all year long we've had spacing problems, guys start chasing the ball and not spacing, not getting wide on the break to give us room. The most important thing is we're holding the ball. The ball has to pop. Portland has decided to play the pick-and-roll a certain way with their big just laying back in the paint and we've got to take up the slack and attack the big and then rise up and make shots. They're giving us certain shots and we're just not making them right now. CP: It is a team game but how much of this is on James playing better? KM: He hasn't played as well as he can. We've just got to get going. James is looking for the perfect play and sometimes he just needs to take what is there. Everybody, James included, has to get better at moving the ball side to side and getting the ball to Dwight. CP: Are you aware of the 11-minute worst-of video of James? KM: No. CP: If you don't win the series will it just be a matter of sometimes teams having to go through the stair step progression and not able to take the express elevator straight to the top? KM: We've been able to get leads every game and in the 4th quarter not able to maintain that. It comes down to not being able to spread the court, getting the ball going, and attacking. We've not been able to do that. We've been able to get stops all season and run and they've been breaking us down on the perimeter and getting what they want. We're not playing with the same pace and urgency as in the regular season. They have gone small and attacked us and got us on our heals. CP: Decision to put in Asik over Jones instead of doubling and risking them raining 3's? KM: We tried doubling in the 2nd game and couldn't get there fast enough. He wasn't in the post. Terrence is young and LaMarcus was way too comfortable. Omer is bigger/stronger. Thought Terrence had a good game 4 against Lopez. It's easy to double team guys in the box. It's hard to double guys at 18 feet facing up with live dribble. It opens up all kinds of lanes. So I made the decision to push LaMarcus into shots with a bigger body on him. CP: When Omer/Dwight are playing extended minutes offensively, do you feel it is an overall disruption to the flow or a net gain to switch? KM: Scoring hasn't really been the issue. It's mainly about getting some stops. They're playing TJ the same way they play Omer. They come off to try to pack the paint with their bigs. They're not really concerned if TJ or Omer get the ball at 18 feet. They're not closing back out on them. They play both of them very similar defense which is, uh, they keep a guy packed back in to the paint the whole time. CP: Troy Daniels...does he have much handle? KM: We needed someone to make some shots. We were shooting 21% from 3 in the first 2 games. Troy can make shots and I like his grittiness, diving on the ball, running back in there and cracking back on Lopez and fighting. He's not afraid to bang. I like that he's a scrapper. The bigs are getting locked up. There's no jumping, just lock ups. So the gaurds have to come in and clean up on the rebounds. In Game 1, they won that game by Lillard coming in and tipping the ball, keeping it alive and Aldridge finally tipped it in. Second game, Lillard runs in from the right flat and picks up an offensive rebound that got them a score and helped them win. So offensive rebounding by the guards is huge and I like that fact that he's not afraid to get dirty and chase some balls down in there. CP: Daniels handle or just spot shooter? KM: (handle) Not his strength. I'm not going to ask him to do stuff he doesn't do well. We may put him in some situations where he can drive and kick but mostly in situations where he is coming off pin-downs or where they have to make a decision to tag the big and come off Troy or do they want to stay with Troy because some of the guys they'll just come off of (JONES!) and they'll really just pack the paint. They don't come off him. They stay on him which gives us a little more room. CP: Pressure on Portland to close out? KM: We've just got to go out and play the game. I don't get into that stuff. CP: Anything they've done that surprises you? Matthews overplaying Harden's left and making him go right? KM: We've seen that before. OKC last year with Sefalosha. You gotta take what they give you. They're really packing the paint more than they did in the regular season against us and have just kinda dared us to make shots. They're going under our dribble handoffs and giving us that shot. Playing PnR aggressive with the guard and laying back with the bigs in the paint but nothing we haven't seen different times during the year. CP: Dmo? KM: Don't feel comfortable with that so we didn't go there. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Just a few points of emphasis here: 1. McHale acknowleged that Jones can't handle LaMarcus. That means he's got to play Omer or Dwight on him to get a bigger/stronger body on him and force him into more difficult shots. 2. McHale acknowledged that Portland is playing Omer and Jones the same. They're letting them go outside and catch the ball and bringing their defender into the paint to congest the paint and help on Harden/Dwight. They don't even come out to challenge when Asik/Jones catch the ball outside. 3. Portland is going with LA at the 5 and four smalls to close out games against us. My point throughout the regular season has been that this is what we were going to face in the playoffs. Teams were going to pack it in to hinder Harden/Dwight as much as possible and dare guys like Jones to beat them from the outside. And Jones wasn't going to be able to defend the double big lineups we would be facing in the playoffs. Now...if I knew that all season long.....don't tell me McHale didn't know that. He knew it. He also knew it after the first 5 minutes of Game 1. He also knew it before Game 2 started and he for sure knew it after the first couple possessions of Game 2. But it's taken him until Game 3 to make a shift towards Omer as LaMarcus' primary defender and it's taken until Game 5 apparently to make an adjustment to create more space on the floor when Portland goes with their small-ball lineup. I fully expect in Game 5 to see another significant shift to small-ball lineups anytime that Portland has only 1 big in the game. I doubt we see Jones except if Portland runs Freeland or TRob in there alongside LA or Lopez. Because Jones simply can't spread the floor!! The thing that kills me about this is I really like McHale. I met him at a game when I was a little kid growing up and he came to town with the Celtics. He's a great guy. But right now I'd like to shake him and ask him what he has been thinking all series and why so late to make the obvious adjustments that we could see we were going to need to make midway through the regular season. He's killing me. Just killing me.
^^ It's okay to like someone but not like their job performance. I really like Scott Brooks, too... but he's not the right guy for that Thunder team, either. The thing is, McHale does actually understand the problems. Stickiness is a problem, and them breaking down the Rockets on the perimeter is the main problem. He has no clue how to fix those problems other than high level observations: Swing the ball more, get less sticky, get grittier, etc. Yeah, they should be doing all that stuff. How about you help them by designing some plays? How about a hard trap off a top of key pick and roll, just to mix it up? Also, this is very concerning: Yeah, you've seen it before and it was a problem before. If there is a seemingly easily guardable weakness of your supposed superstar, best in the league SG, that's a problem. It's always harder to score against good defensive players. And Matthews and Batum aren't bad. But we're not talking about Tony Allen here. Their just really making James go right, and he's struggling a LOT because of it.
Definitely agree that we could really, really use a stretch 4 - even if it was a Delfino type to get us spacing. We work best when the defense can't sag down and clog the driving/passing lanes. I think the Rox were prepared to go with Asik on LMA earlier, he just got some really bad foul calls and got into foul trouble early in the first quarter of Game 1 which pretty much resigned him to the bench. Really, really wish we would've won Game 4. Would have really put this series in a different light. Still have hope, but we're going to have to play 3 really good games on both ends. Hoping we can get it back here for a Game 7 and the team just finds their groove/swag/whatever.
I only read the bolded parts. (Thanks to the poster!) What about movement without the ball? Nobody moves when Harden ISO's. Nobody moves when Howard posts up.
